A Stakeholder’s Perspective on Contaminated Land Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 1059

parties). Technical possibilities (geology, chemistry, biology, technology) also play
a role, but are mostly subordinate to the other aspects of a contaminated site project.
Part of the strategic discussion is the long-term management of the site. In case
there is residual contamination, reassurance should be given on who is going to
manage and monitor this and make sure that the contaminant situation is and stays
in line with the future use of the site. In some countries land spatial planning tools
and land-use restrictions can be filed with authorities, reassuring that future users
cannot develop the site for a more sensitive use than the residual contamination
would allow.
For some sites the ownership changes during this route to the “End State Vision”.
Typically, when the ownership of contaminated or remediated land changes, there
is a transfer or sharing of liability. This may be explicit by contractual agreement
between the vendor and the purchaser, or it may be implicit based on the context
of the land transaction and local regulations. Many large land owners have been
in existence for some time and are also seen as having “deep pockets”. For this
reason they may be cautious about transfer of ownership to organisations that they
see as less (financially) stable, or likely to take actions such as land use change
which is outside their control. This is because they fear that any consequent liability
will still remain with them as original polluters. This can create a tension within
organisations who on the one hand wish to securely manage their own liability in
the long term, but on the other hand would also like to see a return on these assets
and their productive reuse. In sales contracts these long-term contractual obligations
between parties are detailed to protect both parties; occasionally a “dowry” or bank
guarantee is paid for the transfer of a site to a redeveloper which is released to the
new owner in tranches according to the stepwise clean-up and reuse of the site.
In short, a well managed, successful project closure requires a holistic approach
to remediation, which provides the technology required to meet all or most of the
stakeholders' needs. Very often this balance must acknowledge that stakeholder
needs for a particular site can be addressed without the technological goal of com-
plete remediation having been achieved. This may mean in some cases that the level
of risk that is acceptable for a given purpose and that can be achieved within the
constraints of time, budget and technology has to be defined. This process is illus-
trated by the case study of the management of manufactured-gas plants In France,
described below.
Manufactured gas plants (MGPs) were once widespread across Europe. Based on
the distillation of coal, this process produced a purified gas, mostly methane, which
was then stored in gasometers before being injected into the gas network. Such gas
plants were in operation in France from 1798 until the late 1960s, when the develop-
ment of natural gas reserves resulted in the gradual closure of all MGPs across the
country, the last of which ceased operations in 1971. However, although the surface
installations were dismantled during the decommissioning of the sites, by-products
from the distillation of coal and gas purification processes were not always elimi-
nated. These by-products may, for example, have been confined in tanks or absorbed
by soil. The need to manage old MGP sites in a coordinated, coherent way was
highlighted in France during the 1990s at the time the issue of contaminated sites
emerged in France, following the discovery of tar tanks containing by-products from